Taiwan as a Super-Aged Society

Today, due to a scheduled conflict, therefore I 

will be the moderator. And let me first introduce  

our speaker. She is a Professor and Chair of the 

Social Work Department at the National Taiwan  

University. She got both her MSW and Ph.D. degrees 

at Columbia University School of Social Work. Dr.  

Yang has specialized in gerontology since her 

early days in social work. She has published  

widely in various journal outlets and her recent 

research topics include productive aging care and  

work, dementia care, long-term care, and aging 

parents of intellectually challenge people.  

She also sits on many government committees on 

senior social welfare or long-term care. Dr.  

Yan is also very active in developing innovative 

programs of elder care and services. She teaches  

courses on social gerontology, community resource 

management, research methods, and aging social  

policies in Asian countries. She has won NT 

Awards in teaching service-learning courses.  

A quick reminder before I turn the floor to our 

speaker. We welcome the audience to post their  

questions in the Q&A box and I'll collect and 

deliver them to Dr. Yang during the Q&A session.  

Now it's my great pleasure to yield the 

floor to Dr. Yang. Dr. Yang, please.

Thank you, Dr. Dai. It is my great honor 

and pleasure to be here today presenting  

my research and the Taiwan conditions uh 

replacing super age society today at UCLA  

Asia Pacific Center my topic today is Taiwan as a 

super Aid Society challenges and policy responses

First I'd like to, I got some questions from you 

before the webinar and I'll try to answer them and  

add a little more information. First, I'd like 

to give a brief introduction to the aging world  

and Aging Asia. As you know, aging is a global 

issue I'd like to point out here the importance  

of increasing the very old starting from the age 

of 80. The number of persons aged 80 years...

For a quick Interruption could 

you share your screen with us?

Yes, sorry. Thank you.

Okay, can you see my screen now? Okay sorry 

about that. The number of persons aged 80  

years or over is projected to triple from 143 

million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050. So my  

research in the past years has been focused on 

following the development of people over the  

age of 80 or even 85 and I studied Taiwan 

centenarians about 10 to 12 years ago.

We all know that the life expectancy 

globally has been increasing but  

in different regions of the world. The 

development and the speed of the aging  

process are different. For example, when we talk 

about Asia normally, it's close to the global  

average as we can see the green triangle line 

and lately the aging speed has been increasing.

Fertility is the key issue and that affects the 

speed of our aging society. As we can see for  

the world we can divide all of the countries into 

three major groups: high fertility, intermediate  

fertility, and below-replacement fertility. When 

we talk about Taiwan today uh I'd like to share  

that we are at the bottom of the bar we are close 

to number one lowest below replacement fertility.  

The replacement fertility rate, as United 

Nations pointed out, is 2.1 births per woman.

For the world, the fertility rate is steadily 

decreasing, but as we can see for the more  

developed regions because they have studied the 

aging or aged societies many years ago so they  

started to really heighten the awareness of the 

population risks to the whole countrymen. So as  

we can see with many policy responses in the 

more developed regions, the fertility rate has  

been increasing since 2015. But we can see the Red 

Dot. That's Asia and we started in the 1950s, 60s  

from a very high fertility group. Now all the way 

and still continue to drop to below the fertility  

replacement fertility rate. And as we will see 

the situation in Taiwan is even worse than 1.9.  

In the United States as well as in Taiwan, 

the definition of the age is people over 65  

but for now, the United Nations still uh keeps 

the definition of the Aged on age 60 in the past.

This is a slide that we can see population by 

broad age groups and when we talk about aging  

in Asia, I'll compare the global picture 

with the Asia picture. As we can see the  

major difference is the decrease in Asia 

of population in the group of 25 to 64,  

that's our major labor force, and also the steep 

slope of the group for people from birth to 14.  

That's what we talked about fertility rate. These 

two are sharply contrasted between the world  

trends and the Asian trends that will create 

a major challenge for the population aging.

Besides, Asia has a fast-growing aging 

population and we will see in different  

regions, different sub-regions in Asia the 

development is a bit different. The green line,  

that's Western Asia. We still have 

the...we have the highest line and overall,  

we have others like Southern Asia or South Eastern 

Asia still below the average. So the population,  

the Aging population, pressure is less 

for uh for these two sub-regions in Asia.

We need to alert the world that when we talk 

about global aging, Asia's elderly population,  

is the largest in the world and the composition 

will greatly affect the whole economy of the  

world as well as population change. For example, 

migration. Okay, previously in 2017 statistics,  

the share of persons aged 60 and over in the 

world in Asia has already composed 57% of the  

total aged population in the world. And the 

trend has been steady until now. So how is the  

world going to face the challenge of the Aged 

population in Asia? And the crossover effect  

into the whole world, I think that's something 

not only Asian countries need to deal with but  

I think like a research institute such as UCLA 

Asia Pacific Center and other universities and  

other even government agencies and 

institutions need to pay attention to.

So of course, we can imagine that related 

to the vastly increasing aging population,  

the old age dependency ratio is also going up.

When we talk about aging or age deities in Asia, 

we always like to talk about living arrangements  

because family support has been throughout our 

past history. Thousands of years ago, the family  

has been the major support system for other people 

but as we can see, the second group, that's Asia.  

The second group from the left, that's Asia. We 

can still see the light green parts is elderly  

people living with children. Okay, and that's 

still the highest in all of the groups because  

we can compare it with the European column 

and the Northern American column. The light  

green parts are rather small but in Asia until 

2010, we still have over 60 percent of older  

people living with their children and that's 

that that's gonna change really, really fast.

Changes also happen in traditional 

support, and family support structure,  

due to the modernization of Asian societies. First 

of all, we talked about a low fertility rate but  

that translates into fewer children for familiar 

support in Taiwan, the average number of people in  

one household has been decreasing rather fast. 

Many households have only one single residence  

and also we have very high education levels for 

both men and women, especially for the younger  

generation right now, women's education level 

seems to supersede men's education level. Okay,  

so that also affects the female labor 

force participation, and on the other  

side when most women go to the labor force, 

and then that means the caregiver originally  

shared by women in the family, the caregiver 

number in the family has been decreasing.

With a population aging another important 

phenomenon is the feminization of aging.

For the world, we can see over the age of 

60, for every 100 women we have 85 men,  

but for people over the age of 80 every 

100 women, there are only 64 men. Okay,  

so we can see the older group we are talking 

about a higher percentage of women in that group.

In labor force participation globally 

for people over the age of 60,  

we only have 24% of women in the labor 

force compared to 47% of older men. Okay,  

so this is something that we need to... I've 

been really focusing on Taiwan trying to promote,  

as Dr. Dai had introduced me at the beginning, 

I've been trying to promote productive aging,  

especially for women. Okay, and we are trying 

different strategies not only to focus on older  

women but we have to start much earlier. For 

example, how to get those women who left the  

labor force and stayed home to take care of 

their kids while they were young like under  

the age of 12. Maybe we need stronger strategies 

to get those women, those mothers, out of their  

households and into the labor force when all 

their children have grown beyond the age of 12.

As we showed you in the graph earlier, Eastern 

Asia we faced the increasing trend of an aging  

population, but as we can see the labor force 

participation is highest for Southeastern Asia.  

Okay that's that is because the older people 

need to work to make a living in those areas.  

But for Eastern Asia, when the average income 

for older people is higher, they would choose  

other lifestyles such as more like more leisure, 

or other things like focusing on physical health  

or doing other things that they would like to 

do for society. So labor for in terms of labor  

force participation rate. That seems to be low. 

Okay, so is this something that we would rather  

change? And that's a good question for all 

the countries too to discuss now. I'm going to  

get into population aging in Taiwan. It's really 

fast. We have tried many policy interventions but  

they didn't seem to have good effects. Okay, as 

of the end of 2018, life expectancy was already  

80.69 with females even higher at 84.05 um but 

for the year 2022, I guess COVID-19 probably was  

one of the major reasons that affect our 

life. Expectancy dropped about 0.5 years  

and right now we have over 3.6 million older 

people and the three major counties with the  

highest aged population. The oldest county 

is Japan and England and those two are what  

we called the southern counties and the 

rural counties but the number three county  

and the city with the highest age population? 

Taipei City is a high population density city  

on top of the high rate of the older population 

which means we already have close to 480,  

000 Elders. Okay, so every year we have a lot of 

policy debates in Taipei City, for example, should  

we provide living subsidies to all other people 

or should we just design categorical or mistreated  

policies so that will continue to be policy 

debates in metropolitan areas like capacity.  

Okay, I have put a link in my slide but due 

to the time limit, I'm not going to show. So  

this is the population pyramid for the year 

2022. Already we can see the shape is not  

what we are so commonly called the population 

pyramid. Okay, it's not the pyramid anymore.  

Now we have a middle-aged person with a big 

belly but as we move forward we will be even  

distorted towards the top. Then in the year 

2050, we'll see our pattern is really small,  

even like a reversed pyramid. Then that's 

really a big problem. We can fall anytime  

and in the year 2020, we already see the crossover 

between the first birth rate and the death rate.  

And after 2020, uh the death rate will continue to 

increase. Until now, our birth rate is still very,  

very, very, very low. So that means we have more 

people dead than at birth, right? So if we deduct  

the two numbers then that means our population 

is shrinking. We have already passed the stage  

where we have a lot of population surplus. Okay, 

now we have to deal with the population decrease.

So why can't we raise or increase our fertility 

rate effectively? There's a population reason.  

As we can see the fertility age of women has been 

uh declining rather fast in Taiwan. Now it's the  

year 2023. It's right here we have already passed 

for the past 20 years. The fertility aged women,  

the number has been decreasing but we can still 

see we have a group of age 40 to 49 this group  

of women still contributing to birth. Okay, as 

we have heard, for example, some famous stars  

like movie stars or models, etc. give birth. 

Okay, so they are not single cases. They are  

actually good examples of this group of women 

still contributing to birth. Okay, but now this  

group also has been decreasing and the youngest 

one from 15 to 29 because they have delayed  

marriage or they don't get married. And so the 

birth that they are contributing is less and less.

Okay, now we go into the section on challenges,  

I'll share the challenges with the 

system perspective from micro to macro.  

In microsystems we need to think about all the 

individuals how do we age, how do we proceed  

from one life stage for example from a very 

productive working age to retirement? Okay,  

how do we proceed from One Life Stage or one 

family stage to the next? And I Advocate that  

all individuals need to have a life plan all the 

way to 100 years and over. Okay because the number  

of centenarians for example in Taiwan has tripled 

over the past 20 years and because the number is  

still rather small like close to 5000 centenarians 

in the total population of Taiwan so people tend  

not to pay so much attention to the super. Oh, so 

we don't have any plan every time I ask people how  

old do you want to live up to? People would say 

oh maybe 80 and plus if I don't if I develop some  

debilitating conditions then I'd rather not live 

but that's not gonna happen, okay? Life is control  

by God not by people so mostly so we need to 

really prepare ourselves to have a complete plan  

throughout the whole life cycle all the way up 

to the life even past 100 years old. Okay, so our  

life plan needs to include elements like how do we 

become how do we prepare to become a centenarian  

or how do we strengthen our family support. 

Until today we still have about 90% almost all  

about 97% of older adults have children but as I 

mentioned this condition has changed drastically.  

In the metal systems, Taiwan has a great 

history of Community Development it has  

been a policy priority since 1960s but now we 

need to face the challenge how we transform the  

model of Community Development from a heavily 

economic model to a more ecological paradigm  

including social inclusion, environment 

sustainability, etc. so when we talk about  

the challenges in metal system for example we 

need to discuss how to integrate and manage the  

various resources: economic, social-political, 

agricultural, cultural, etc in the community  

and the number two example how do we protect the 

diversity and the sustainability in the community,  

especially in rural or remote countries areas 

when younger people tend to migrate to urban areas  

for the macro systems? The major issue is the 

decline in labor supply as we have reached the  

stage of population decrease that may have 

an impact potentially to reduce the decline  

in economic growth. Okay, especially we don't see 

it now because Taiwan has been relying heavily on 

the semiconductive industry. Okay 

yeah and for the aged society,  

the nation will face a great burden on Health 

and Social care and also because of the policy  

paths with countries when we talk about policies 

dealing with the Aging or age population. They may  

easily cause intergenerational gaps and conflicts. 

Okay and then in dealing with that unfortunately  

Nations tend to have a very slow process 

to make Innovative legislation changes.  

When we talk about the different speeds of 

population aging in the sub-regions of Asia,  

I open focus on international cooperation 

as a borderless development but we also have  

international competition when each nation-state 

is trying hard to protect its internal population  

and the labor force. Okay, so these two, how can 

we really have a peaceful development trend in  

the Asian big region and the sub-regions in Asia? 

I think that's gonna effect and maybe decide how  

the Asian countries deal with our aging or age 

the population and of course, the greatest war or  

the greatest risk lately is the discussion about 

how to keep peace in the region and I strongly  

believe that in order to make all our discussions 

like today with any meaning at all we do need a  

peaceful uh environment in the world and then now 

I'm going to talk about current policy highlights  

for the legislation and the policy we have 

the elderly Welfare Law fairly recently  

revised and we have the long-term care 

plan 1.0 in 2007 and 10 years later 2017,  

we had the 2.0 that's the major long-term 

care policy in Taiwan and we have the white  

paper on AIDS Society policies revised in 2021. 

Four goals in the white paper include autonomy,  

Independence, social inclusion, and 

the sustainability for older population  

following the policy highlights. We have a few 

practice highlights to share with you. The number  

one is health promotion we really advocate for 

integrated Body, Mind, and spiritual activities  

and our government has spent lots of effort to 

highlight the importance of nutrition using my  

meal plate. We have apps, we have videos, Etc and 

we focus on telling medicine and Telecare because  

Taiwan is a technology country and my role as 

a social work researcher is the professor. My  

role in the multi-uh disciplinary team is open to 

focusing on building the digital infrastructure  

and the social culture in the population, 

and daily life. Okay, and this is the...  

I think I'm running short of time so I'm not 

going to share the website of this company it's  

called the Jubal. I started this company, a care 

information system company and now it covers about  

one-third of the long-term care institutions 

in Taiwan. This company was started up by a  

multi-disciplinary research team at National 

Taiwan University and I was... when our primary  

researcher uh left the university to 

launch this startup company I was the  

head of the multi-disciplinary research 

team for two years and now we are still  

working part to promote this company. It 

has already branches in North America,  

actually in California and Canada, and Japan, and 

recently we established an office in Singapore.  

And this is another highlight we very much 

emphasize in Taiwan. It's the patient autonomy  

act that we established this act in 2015. It 

was the first day in Asia and this has this  

is the follow-up of years of efforts 

in promoting hospice palliative care.  

And we do have a hospice palliative act in Taiwan 

as you can see in the left photo, this lady in a  

dark suit she's the mother of our Taiwan hospice 

palliative care Dr. Chantel and the right photo  

because I just completed a three-year project of 

National Power University Social Responsibility  

Project and my focus was also how we can live a 

peaceful life and experience of a peaceful death  

and long-term care 2.0 is the heart issue 

in Taiwan right now and we also spend a  

lot of efforts promoting social inclusion of 

elderly people encouraging them to do volunteer  

them and also encourage intergenerational 

social enterprise startup companies. And  

we also use this intergenerational approach 

to hire young athletes to be elderly health  

coaches this is an exercise group in a hot 

spring in Taitong in the East part of Taiwan  

and recently we hope we focus very much on 

community sustainability and we've learned  

very much from the Japan experience because they 

have much more experiences dealing with age,  

satiety than Taiwan so Taiwan has really 

considered Japan as a wonderful experience  

bank. We followed Japan's Footsteps 

in promoting Regional revitalization.  

Okay, we have a major government institution 

promoting Regional revitalization.  

Okay, my final takeaway point for all the 

audience today is super age society requires  

transformative changes as the UN alerted all 

the nations years ago that we cannot follow  

the Old Paths that are not gonna be good enough 

for such a fastly increasing aging population.

And when we do change, when we talk 

about transformative changes Innovation  

is the key. But Innovation is rooted in the 

understanding of the super old as well as  

their environment meaning we have to understand 

individuals, families, communities, societies,  

nations as well as the global world. Helen 

has been learning from the world such as  

North American, and European countries, as well 

as Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea  

while we face challenges of the super-aged society 

uh but Asia Pacific nations have a lot to share  

with each other because we have different speed 

of population aging and we are in different stages  

of economic development and we have different 

strong Industries so I believe that we have a  

lot to share with each other in order to promote 

mutual prosperity and also we can deal with aging  

population together. Now, Taiwan has set up 

multifaceted policies and strategies and we are  

very serious about implementing our strategies and 

options. I believe that we are ready to share some  

of our experiences and thoughts with the world 

while we enter the super-aged society in 2026.  

Thank you very much this is my photo taken in 

the year 2011. Well, I did my Taiwan centenarian  

studies, this beautiful lady doesn't look like 

a centenarian, right? Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you Pei-shan Young for your great 

presentation. And since there are many  

insights and thoughts for our audiences 

to digest, please allow me to use the  

privilege as the moderator to first 

propose a few questions. Meanwhile,  

for our audiences, if you have any 

questions please post them in the Q&A box.  

So my first question is a general one because 

whenever thinking about the issue of a super-aged  

society I'm thinking about whether Taiwan or Asia 

in general is the special case so and I'm also  

thinking about the trajectory of a super-aged 

society so I'm just curious is the trending of  

a super-aged society irreversible, unstoppable or 

it could actually be reversed to to some extent?

Well, all countries in the world 

eventually become super-aged societies  

and in your presentation, you talk about a 

lot of policies dealing with long-term care  

but my second question has to do with the fact 

that the issue of an aging society is not just  

about long-term care but also the potential 

shortage of labor supply. So in this sense  

could you tell us more about what policies the 

Taiwanese government has adapted to deal with  

the short to deal with a labor shortage 

that is caused by an aging population?

Thank you, okay. Thank you Dr Dai 

for your questions. I'd like to  

just briefly answer just share some 

of my thoughts in terms of the trend  

of super-aged societies I think of course 

human beings control our-may control our  

future. Okay, so I will not say it's an 

irreversible trend but for now, especially in the  

case of Taiwan, I think we are very special in the 

rest of the special case reads in the extreme law.  

Fertility and the population are something that we 

cannot reverse. For example, we only had 139,000  

babies born in the year 2022 and we could not 

reverse that calendar to have more babies in  

the year 2022. And as we have fewer birth we 

have fewer and fewer fertility-aged women. Then  

it's even harder to boost fertility. So for now I 

don't see a dramatic change because we are below  

the fertility rate of 1.0. It's already like a 

0.9 or 0.89 so it's very difficult to jump back  

to 2.1 the replacement rate. So for now I don't 

see the trend with any possibility of reverse  

but for the global world because we still have 

the nations with higher fertility rate if we  

can consider the whole world as one global 

village, I think that's easier to reverse  

the aging trend but if we still focus on each 

nation individually, I think many nations will  

face the the great challenges of population 

graying or aging in terms of long-term care  

adapter like. You are absolutely right the major 

challenge is the shortage of labor supply. Okay,  

for now, Taiwan has applied the policy of free 

pre-labor Supply from the... we use the labor  

supply from Southeastern countries, especially 

like Indonesia or Vietnam, and Thailand.  

But as the economy has been booming in these 

countries we are facing more and more difficulty  

in getting migrant workers. As the major supply of 

our caregivers. Okay, so the Taiwan government has  

been trying to loosen up the control the border 

control. For example, we use the case of COVID.  

Now the government has released a new policy to 

give them to what's the word to not find a major  

amount for those escaped migrant workers. 

Okay, we have about 80,000 escaped migrant  

workers in the black market. So the government 

used the situation of COVID to encourage those  

escape to workers to come out and they will 

not get a major fan, they will only get just  

a symbolic fight of two thousand eighty dollars 

that's about 70 dollars U.S. So they will be free  

of the charge or agree of punishment. Okay, so 

hopefully we can encourage those workers to come  

out and really get into the normal labor market 

but still, I believe that the Taiwan government  

has been seriously thinking about our migration 

policies because over the past decades, we kind of  

targeted certain groups of people rather using a 

free migration policy, so I think that's something  

that the government needs to think about and 

also since Taiwan is a technology country,  

we try very hard to use our strengths. Okay, for 

example in my own research, I have been working  

with my Ph.D. students in designing social robots. 

Okay, so we hope to engage and apply social robots  

in the care industry and hopefully besides the 

information system that we use for management and  

case follow-ups but now we try to incorporate 

social robots and even we try to build a  

technology development Development Center in the 

local communities. That's my recent project so  

we try to use our strength in technology, 

to compensate for our shortage of labor.

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Yang, for 

these great responses and we have got  

we've got a lot of great questions from the 

audiences. Let me post them to you so could  

you explain the correlation between the 

decreasing birth rates and the current  

Taiwanese working class opinion towards 

embracing children. Okay, I often speak to,  

I often like to chat not speak chat with my 

young students in college and the postgraduate.

Sometimes, sometimes before we forget life 

is long if we only focus on the hardship  

right in front of our face. Okay, when when 

they are in college or when they just get  

out of college of course their income is lower, 

but they have a long working life maybe 30 or 40  

years. And their income will increase and their 

resources like social resources and other life  

experiences will increase but at that time when 

they want to go back to have family and children,  

the time has already passed. Okay, so life is 

long. I think I really treasure my life experience  

starting at an early age as a gerontologist 

because I always see life as a whole process.  

So sometimes it is really true for younger people. 

I also suffered great financial difficulty when I  

studied for my masters in the U.S. and later in my 

Ph.D. and when I returned back to Taiwan in 1997  

after already 10 years of work in the U.S., 

I still carried a heavy debt. But gradually,  

I waited and waited until the time that I 

could acquire my own house, a small apartment  

and now I'm at the age of 59 and I'm 

already a grandma. So looking back I think  

the culture, the current culture is different 

uh among the Young Generation but I wish if we  

could have more intergenerational dialogue 

we could share some of our experiences and  

even all sorts of support to encourage 

them and to walk beside them hopefully  

we will see a different culture related to having 

family and children but it's their own decisions.

And we have some questions from 

the audience related to the issue  

of fertility rate so could you explain 

to us in terms of what factors might  

lead to such a low fertility rate in 

Taiwan? For example, like the state  

has to do with does it has something to 

do with individual socioeconomic status?

I would say no because the most wealthy 

group of the population in Taiwan has  

not contributed to more children. For a 

higher-educated High-income female group,  

we have a very low fertility rate. So 

having children, I think, it's still a  

life choice. It's a very individualized 

choice so the government policy may not  

be very effective in changing or deciding 

for individuals how to live their life.  

Many women, many highly educated and high-income 

women now even think about uh freezing their eggs  

when they are still striving in the lab in their 

career. And they wanted to wait until they are  

ready then they can start okay and our government 

is even thinking about subsidizing the price the  

cost of freezing their ex, yeah but that's a 

highly controversial policy as you can imagine.

And Dr. Yang, so one question would like 

to place Taiwan in a comparative sense.  

So what other Asian country is the 

most similar to Taiwan and what have  

we learned from such countries that 

are also facing an aging population?

I think  

South Korea. We often call Taiwan 

and South Korea the brothers states  

because we are very similar in our past history 

of Economic Development and population development  

and our age-population ratio is very close 

right now. Okay, and the lowest status is so  

very similar sometimes they are the world's number 

one law, and something like last year Taiwan was  

the lowest low. So we are very similar but South 

Korea has used the social insurance scheme for  

their long-term care but Taiwan even though in the 

planning stage Thailand also before 20 before 2008  

we were also on the track of developing long-term 

care insurance, that's a social insurance scheme,  

but we chose not to go that route because 

our government believed that the supply  

for long-term care especially the labor force 

issue was not ready for a social insurance scheme.  

Okay so right now we use the government-subsidized 

plan of long-term care 2.0 but the fact is  

we still rely heavily on family support and 

family caregivers. So I think that something  

very unique in Taiwan is that our support system 

for family caregivers is getting stronger and  

stronger and our association of Taiwan Family 

Support Association has Global recognition.  

With this regard, I think that's something. I 

think that's one of our greatest strengths to  

support our family givers and it's also our 

culture as I mentioned 97% of the current  

older people still live with their children 

and still have children. So their children  

really take great responsibility too. It's 

not just a responsibility but it's our  

love to our aging and aged parents. For example, 

in the past few years, my mother passed away in  

five years. Five years ago my father, four years 

ago my mother-in-law three years ago, and looking  

back I really feel very comforted that I spend a 

lot of time in an effort trying to be with them,  

not sometimes we couldn't care enough for them. 

Even though we had a really difficult time while  

I had three aged parents under my care but looking 

back now, I feel I have done what I should and I  

feel really comforted. And I think a lot of my 

friends share such experiences and for those  

people who really are still suffering for their 

care duties we try our utmost best to support  

them. We have established family caregiver support 

centers in the community and we have all kinds  

of class activities. The only thing that we have 

done short of is to give them financial subsidies  

but other than real money we try everything 

that we can to support families' caregivers  

because we understand they are the 

key to our long-term care system.

Okay, yeah thank you Dr Yan for these 

professional insights. We have some  

questions related to labor shortage 

and migration. So in terms of Taiwan  

as a super-age society have you noticed any 

trains in terms of young Taiwanese working  

professionals moving overseas to work and 

how does this contribute to the Aging trend?

I think most young people in Taiwan, 

they remain. Okay, we only have  

I think the young generation really treasure 

the freedom and the lifestyle in Taiwan. Okay  

sometimes even though our income level is a little 

low but compared to our living cost and all the  

family support and social support system I think 

for example we have fewer and fewer graduates  

from National Taiwan University to go abroad 

compared to my time. A lot of graduates from  

National Taiwan University at my time went abroad 

for further study but now they try to get into the  

labor market earlier and establish their own life 

earlier in life okay so I think the culture uh in  

the Young Generation is very realistic, I should 

say. Okay, so we see it's just a small percentage  

of people working abroad, actually. I have one 

Ph.D. student currently who just finished 12 years  

of working in Singapore and came back uh because 

they wanted their children to grow up in Taiwan.

Thank you, Dr Yan. And uh we have  

two more questions and the first one has to 

do with the culture in Taiwan. So a lot of  

your presentation focuses on the role of the 

family and it would be considered as part of  

the confusion though we are curious whether 

it is still so important today in Taiwanese  

society? And the second question has to do with 

how could you define fertility in your research?

How to identify fertility in my research? The  

fertility rate is... we have a clear 

Global definition for fertility  

so I'm not quite sure about that question 

but I'll answer the previous question first.  

People often talk about Asian cultures, and 

Confucian culture but actually, Confucianism is  

only one philosophical School in Asia. We also 

have Buddhism. we have Taoism and we have not  

only Asian but we also have Western religions that 

also support family and having children. Okay for  

example, in Buddhism people believe that no matter 

what relationship we are in it's because we have  

like we have a destined relationship with 

our parents with our children so we'd like  

to nurture such relations. So it's not just 

for Confucianism I believe but we have other  

sorts of philosophies that all together 

support a harmonious society in Taiwan.  

Okay so that's why we do not only feel obligated 

to care for our parents but we may feel for  

example I'm Catholic and also love Buddhism 

a lot I often hear the teaching of Buddhist  

schools so I would believe that all these 

philosophies support my love towards my  

age the parents as well as my two daughters 

and now my granddaughter. So uh it's a holistic  

culture of such relationships and I think 

that's still very common in Taiwan. Okay  

even in the very young generation as we can 

see they go to churches, they go to Temples,  

we just finished the Chinese New Year 

from the first day to the 15th day,  

right and we see on the news that many young 

people go to temples to worship and to make  

the good wishes for a new year and then to 

wish good wishes for their family and friends.

And please allow me to post one last question. 

One of our audience finds your introduction of  

lifespan planning very interesting so could you 

give us a bit more detail on how that works the  

middle age cohort seems to be sandwiched 

between the yarn and old how do they fare  

when under such dual pressure? Any policy to 

support those who are in a middle-aged cohort?

Thank you, okay, in gerontology we use 

the perspective called a life course which  

means from birth, from a cradle to grave right 

it's a complete process and we need to really  

take this in. So when we were, for example, when 

we are in early adulthood the highest priority  

may be just thinking about how to graduate, how 

to start our career, how to start our family,  

Etc. But you also have to think like 50 years 

later. So if we consider the whole life process,  

I think that's easier to make a life plan. For 

example, I would ask my student to Think Through  

what family and children mean to them. Okay if 

they really whether they are really whether they  

really do not want or like family and children or 

they are just having some difficulties financially  

or career-wise or support-wise. So these two are 

different because you have for example if they  

still like to have family and children but 

they are concerned they have many concerns,  

then we can use our social policy, National 

policy, or personal support to do our best  

to make them less concerned. For example, 

now we have social housing more and more  

social housing we have subsidized brain 

housing and I think some Asian countries  

have recently just started to give all people a 

basic income of maybe 50 50 40 to 50 NT dollars.  

So I think we the Asian countries have been tried 

experimenting with a lot of very Innovative social  

policies trying to boost the fertility rate. 

Okay, I think the most important thing is we  

want to show all the people, The Young and the 

old in Taiwan that we are all together and we are  

facing our future together. No matter what we have 

experienced we will hot hands and go through it.

As the moderator and organizer of today's event, 

I would like to show my sincere gratitude to Dr.  

Yan for her fascinating presentation and responses 

in the Q&A. We thank all participants for a great  

discussion. For our center's upcoming events, 

we invite you to subscribe to our Center's  

email list to learn more about UCLA Asia Pacific 

Center's future activities over the past year  

announced. Good evening and good morning again 

we hope to see you at our future events. Thank  

you and please take care. Thank you, thank you 

Dr. Dai. Thank you UCLA Asian Pacific Center.  

Thank all the audience. Thank you, bye bye, thank 

you, thank you, Professor Yan, yeah thank you.